Remember that time when you couldn’t move for zombie related projects? I know that I haven’t exactly narrowed it down much, what with the steady stream of movies, books, video games, TV shows and comics that’s been flowing almost constantly for well over twenty years, but I guess the reason the genre simply refuses to roll over and die is because zombies are so gosh darn malleable. A great example of this is a near-forgotten zomble flick that debuted in 2016 and tried a bunch of new things that resulted in a movie that covered all the undead basics while keeping the moldering bastards feeling fresh as a daisy. Yes, some of it is reminiscent of the 2013 video game, The Last Of Us and it’s unavoidable to set a zombie film in England without invoking thoughts of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later – but add a little Lord Of The Flies in there and you’ll find that The Girl With All The Gifts also comes with the goods too.
It’s the near future and mankind has been devastated by a parasitic fungus that wraps itself around the brain like a limpet and turns its host into teeth chattering ghouls, but while zombies (known as “hungries”) roam the perimeter of a military base, the search for a cure continues within. The secret of the research are a group of carriers who just all happen to be normal looking young children, however, if they catch an unfiltered scent of a human, they revert into feral beasts with an uncontrollable hunger for flesh. While the impressively cold Dr. Caroline Caldwell oversees the study by carving up these mutant kids in order to chase a vaccine, the far warmer Helen Justineau acts as a teacher to the children as she studies them up close.
It’s here that we meet head of the class, Melanie, an extremely bright girl who idolises Justineau and is tremendously eager to please in a way the other children aren’t. While her smarts bring her to the attention of both Justineau and Caldwell, Melanie’s desire to learn has her eventually on the operating table, but before her brain and spine can be harvested in order to make a cure. However, when a swarm of hungries manage to overwhelm the base, the survivors have a treacherous journey to undertake. Heading into London and flanked by the stern Sergent Parks and a small assortment of soldiers, Melanie, Justineau and Caldwell hope to make it to the relative safety of another research station, but the more new experiences that Melanie has, the more freedom she wants, which is something of an issue when fitting her with a Hannibal Lector mask is an advisable safety precaution.
As Melanie embraces her her newfound freedom, she still remains the pleasant and eager to please child that she’s always been, however, with mankind decidedly on the ropes, she starts to wonder if a cure is what mankind really needs.
Based on the 2014 novel by Mike Carey, The Girl With All The Gifts manages to balance the tension and survival horror of your average zombie flick with something a bit more poignant and the best and quickest way I can think to describe it is what if Bub from Day Of The Dead was a ten year old girl? Yes, it’s 28 Days Later, but precocious; it’s The Last Of Us, but Ellie has better manners and also becomes a snarling beast when she smells unfiltered human; it’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes with zombies – but despite being all of the above, Colm McCarthy’s end of the world fable is surprisingly gentle despite featuring a prepubescent who could tear your throat out.
The most intriguing aspect of the story is the gradual reveal. Where most modern day zombie films either drop you right into the carnage of day one of the infection, or start years in and batters you with exposition, The Girl With All The Gifts instead favour a drip feed approach to its storytelling, literally denying us any information until Melanie discovers it which makes her our tour guide through this instance of a ruined future. In fact, interestingly enough, the movie doesn’t even fully reveal itself as a zombie flick until we’re fully familiar with Melanie as a character as she negotiates her curious position. Waking in a cell, strapped into a chair daily by callous, but cautious soldiers and then placed in a bare room with fellow children to experience something of a bizarre parody of a school day, the film teases everything while revealing nothing, making it instantly intriguing.
Of course, once the zombified shit hits the fan, things become a whole lot more familiar, but the film refuses to relinquish it’s focus on Melanie which allows us to see a ruined England through the eyes of an excited girl who has never left a bunker in her life. Keeping things different from the zombie-norm, this outbreak has been caused by a Cordyceps-like fungal infection that’s way more devestating than athlete’s foot and even though the “hungries” aren’t as visually spectacular as the ones in The Last Of Us, McCarthy still manages to wring plenty of tense set pieces out of them, such as having the humans creep past them as they stand statue-like in the street however, it’s the larger ideas that the film is exploring that make it stand out.
I brought up Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes earlier and if you were to graft Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend to its cerebellum like a fungal infection, you’ve pretty got the scale the movie is shooting for. However, as Melanie’s childlike wonder soon zeroes in on a realisation of something more grand, the fact that we see it all through the eyes of an inhuman child makes it almost seem like a tragically beautiful fairytale. Such a tightrope would be fairly difficult to maintain, but thankfully the movie comes with a fairly stacked cast that helps to bring it into being. But while Gemma Arterton brings all the maternal vibes you’d get from a favorite primary school teacher, Paddy Considine delivers a soldier whose jaded facade soon starts to melt and Glenn Close goes full calculating scientist, it’s Sennia Nanua’s bright eyed Melanie who skillfully manages to avoid being irritating and who ties the whole thing together.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a true zombie film without moments of horror, but other than an early zombie attack that swarms the base, McCarthy keeps things subtle, allowing our over active imaginations to take the strain. Take the explanation Caldwell gives Melanie give for the origin of her freakish existence that ends with Close delivering the ominous line “they ate their way out” with more weight than a cartoon anvil, or innocently terrible decision Melanie makes that will ultimately change the world.
At turns creepy, touching and impressively tragic, for those who fancies their zombie stories to feature some heart, brains and soul to go with their exposed guts and torn jugulars need to except the gifts that the movie offers you.
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